Inprise CEO, CFO resign

The departure of Inprise chief executive Del Yocam, hired two
years
ago to steer the once high-flying toolmaker back on the right path, has
plunged the firm back into uncertainty, analysts say.

Yocam and chief financial officer Kathleen Fisher resigned abruptly
yesterday, a day after Scotts Valley, California-based Inprise's first
quarter closed. An Inprise spokeswoman said their departures are not tied to
the quarterly results, which will be released in mid to late April.

"Del had been on vacation the past several weeks. I don't know how much of
a surprise this was to everyone, but it was not considered imminent," the
spokeswoman said. "There's some thought that Del felt he had done what he
could have done for the company and he's been commuting for two years from
Oregon. That it was a combination of those two reasons."

But one analyst thinks Yocam's departure and the quarterly results are
connected.

"They say there's no connection, but certainly the timing is suspicious,
especially since they gave no [official] reasons for the
resignations,"
said analyst Brian Goodstadt, of Standard & Poor's Equity Group. "I won't
be surprised to see other defections until they come up with a new
management team that can annunciate a clear strategy to get the company
back on track."

In the interim, Inprise will be run by an executive committee made up of
James Weil, president of the Inprise division; John Floisand; president of
the Borland.com division; Jay Leite, formerly vice president of business
development and now acting as interim chief financial officer; and Hobart
Birmingham, vice president and general counsel.

A spokeswoman at the company said the board
is actively seeking a CFO replacement from outside the company, and are
considering their options for the top spot.

Analyst Mike Gilpin of Giga Information
Group, was not surprised by Yocam's resignation. "The circumstance was
that he was a turnaround specialist, and although it appeared he was
executing on a plan, things didn't turn out as planned," he said.

Yocam, previously Apple's executive vice
president and chief operating officer, replaced Gary Wetsel as head of
Inprise in the summer of 1996, after the software tools company suffered
dismal quarterly earnings.

Yocam attempted to steer the development tools company into the lucrative
enterprise software business, serving large corporations.

Last spring, the company bought middleware firm Visigenic Software and
changed its name from Borland to Inprise to reflect the new strategy of
providing enterprise and middleware software for businesses. At the heart of
the company's strategy was an application server, which combined technology
from both Borland and Visigenic.

But Inprise has struggled. In the fourth quarter, the company laid off 190
employees after reporting a net income of $3.5 million on $48.2 million in
revenue. Sales were $1 million below Wall Street estimates.

Yocam restructured the company this spring into two divisions: Borland.com,
focusing on its development tools, and Inprise, specializing in enterprise
and middleware products.

The problem, Gilpin believes, was that Yocam couldn't get the company's
enterprise software team to work with the development tools division.

"There was so much company history with the [development tools] part
of the
company that it was not in synch with the new strategy, the application
server-centric view of the world," Gilpin said. "It tore the company inside
and reflected on Borland.com being separated."

Gilpin said Yocam had the company headed in the right direction.

"He defined the new Inprise mission around application servers and the
unification of that with development tools. That was the right mission and
had the greatest promise to turn a profit in the future," he said. "The
problem is to achieve that, you have to get the troops marching in the same
direction, and for some reason, that didn't happen."

Goodstadt agreed. "It seemed like he had the company on the right path for
a little while, but the past few quarters have been difficult," Goodstadt
said. "They're facing some real tough competitors out there, like
Microsoft, that have made it tough for them."

Analysts said it was probably a mistake to have changed the company name
from Borland to Inprise. And the new leader needs to take better advantage
of the Borland name, which resonates with software developers who recall the
company's early years under founder Philippe Kahn.

"It's not to say they should change the company's name back to Borland, but
they should not forget the Borland legacy. That it's a good development
firm for developers," Goodstadt said.

But both analysts said the middleware market is growing rapidly, which
should benefit Inprise financially in the future.

Goodstadt said Inprise might make a good acquisition target for some
competitors because its stock price is low. But an Inprise spokeswoman said
management has no plans to sell the company.

Some analysts have speculated that Sun
Microsystems might be interested in purchasing Inprise for its Java
development tool called JBuilder. But Sun executives have declined to comment
on the speculation.